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Because I am lazy and don’t want to research it myself, could someone here clearly articulate how a jury could convict Trump? Michael Cohen is a pervasive liar, was caught lying under oath during questioning, said he would like to see trump found guilty, etc.
I am sincerely asking if this is blatant court prejudice or if there is something more here. I do get that there was circumstantial evidence along with Michael cohen testimony, but I would have expected an outcome of hung jury.
There is no reason to get it into the backstory. Let’s stay focused on the legal issue of using funds inappropriately.
“could someone here clearly articulate how a jury could convict Trump?”
It’s very simple. It was preordained from the get-go. It was deliberately a cherry-picked jury in the most left-wing zip codes in the country, chosen for its location.
The prosecution’s case had flaws that couldn’t be wallpapered over even with weeks of testimony, over 200 exhibits and a polished and persuasive presentation by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, and his team. If Mr. Trump’s lawyers had played their cards right, they most likely would have ended up with a hung jury or a misdemeanor conviction.
The defense lost a winnable case by adopting an ill-advised strategy that was right out of Mr. Trump’s playbook. For years, he denied everything and attacked anyone who dared to take him on. It worked — until this case.
“Jurors often want to side with prosecutors, who have the advantage of writing the indictment, marshaling the witnesses and telling the story. The defense needs its own story, the side that tells the simpler story at trial usually wins.
Instead of telling a simple story, Mr. Trump’s defense was a haphazard cacophony of denials and personal attacks. That may work for a Trump rally or a segment on Fox News, but it doesn’t work in a courtroom. Perhaps Mr. Trump’s team was also pursuing a political or press strategy, but it certainly wasn’t a good legal strategy. The powerful defense available to Mr. Trump’s attorneys was lost amid all the clutter.
The trial dragged on for weeks largely because of Mr. Trump’s “deny everything” approach. A savvy defense counsel would have stipulated that Mr. Trump had an intimate affair with Ms. Daniels. Instead, the defense forced the prosecution to prove that the affair occurred and proceeded to aggressively attack Ms. Daniels, whom some of the jury likely found sympathetic in her testimony. That attack gained no ground legally for the defense — little turned on whether Mr. Trump had a sexual encounter with her — but distracted from his actual defense.
Similarly, the cross-examination of Mr. Cohen dragged on for days because the defense sought to confront him with every lie it could identify, seemingly every misdeed he ever committed and every potential line of attack it could come up with.
Because the defense denied everything and attacked Mr. Cohen on every point, prosecutors were able to focus on the many points where Mr. Cohen’s testimony was corroborated by documents, phone records, text messages and a recording. If the defense had narrowly focused on the key points on which that testimony was not corroborated, it could have undermined the prosecution’s advantage.”
From: Mariotti, R. (2024, May 30). Opinion | How Trump’s Team Blew It. The New York Times.
Trump has been defined as evil and an enemy of the people. If the Democrats wanted a verdict that would discredit him, they would have avoid a jury pool drawn from a county that voted overwhelmingly for Biden. In political tries (which one once very common, especially in the southern states in the Jim Crow), arranging a biased jury pool was a key element in convicting those considered a threat to society (and to a Democrat, Trump is an existential threat to their culture and way of life). Also note that the judge was elected and could lose his job for disobeying the party’s leaders.
I suspect had the trial been in a less biased county (upstate, or at least in Richmond County/Staten Island)), the result would have been different.
No one has ever been prosecuted for such a crime before. In fact, the chief witness was a woman who would have been tried for blackmail in most jurisdictions. Trump is the first person convicted of paying hush money to a blackmailer. Had he been politically correct, he would have been a prosecution witness against the blackmailer.
Baruch Green of VIN News said:
President Trump is now a convicted felon.
He was found guilty by a biased jury, guided by a leftist judge
who is a Biden donor, and prosecuted by a Soros-backed DA.Anyone who followed the trial knows that these charges were completely bogus.
Fabricated. Manufactured. Made up from thin air.All Trump did was label the payments he made to a lawyer as “LEGAL EXPENSES”.
There are no words to properly describe the level of travesty and corruption.
SOURCE: article titled: “POLITICAL HOCK: This is a Dark Day for America”
by Baruch Green 2024 May 31 www (dot) VIN News (dot) com===============================================
On 2024 June 2, Mr. Elon Musk said this on Fox News:
“If a former President can be criminally convicted
over such a trivial matter — motivated by politics,
rather than justice — then anyone is at risk of a similar fate.”It is quite simple.
No research needed.
Trump’s defense team never put together an alternative explanation of the facts, much of which are not in dispute.
Jury was shown solid pieces of evidence.
Michael Cohen’s testimony, together with other witnesses’ testimony, explained everything to a T.The defense had no other reasonable explanation because it is obvious to the entire world that he was hiding the affair before the election and was making false entries in the business ledger to hide the fact that he was paying off Cohen to hide the affair.
In all the cases that Trump is charged with, he never disputes the facts. He admits that he committed the crimes.
He simply has many reasons why he should get away with it. He has the Republican party and Fox news 24/7 bluffing the American people with reasons why he should be allowed to have committed crimes and get away with them.That is why he has lost the first 3 cases and will lose the next 3 also. Because when you are in a court of law, propaganda is not admissible.
to segue into learning: this is a good moment to learn what is (and in this case IS NOT) a kosher witness. From Jewish POV, defense should all the right things – how much the witness was lying, including to the jury itself. If it were a beis din, they would say “enough, enough” after 2-3 examples and dismissed the witness.
jackk
I assume that billionaires do not bother with classifying entries for payments. They have finance people who do it and don’t busy themselves with trivial matters such as classifying expenses.
Furthermore, according to the expert willing to testify, this was done appropriately. The judge limited the scope of what the witness may or may not say.
This is the opinion of experts in law, including those on the left.
NonImpeditiRationeCogitationis
The opinion piece you quoted assumes that Trump is guilty, but a better strategy would be to admit his guilt or that he should have admitted to something he may have never done.
If that is how to win cases, it’s a sad day for our justice system.
FollowMesorah,
I thought you didn’t want to get into the nitty gritty. I gave you the top level overview without all the fluff. It is exactly what the Jury saw and convicted him on.
“The first is that he was clearly paying to keep a story quiet. unequivocally, that is not illegal and was never the issue.”. That is an issue since it is part of the illegal scheme.
“Paying Cohen” and “false business entries” were all corroborated by direct evidence.Here is a small summary of what the 34 charges were and the evidence and testimony.
The $130,000 payment was made by Mr. Trump’s fixer/lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, in the final days of the 2016 campaign. It was done at Mr. Trump’s direction.
Pecker testified that he schemed with Trump to hush all the stories of his affairs. We see how important this was to him that he was will to pay big money for it.While “hush money” payments are not necessarily illegal, Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen during his presidency. (Isn’t it great imagining Trump sitting in the oval office , signing a Trump Org. Business check because of an affair he had , at the same time that he publicly announced that he renounced his position in the organization and given everything over to Jr. But, that is a side point ) In internal records, Mr. Trump’s company classified the repayment to Mr. Cohen as legal expenses, citing a retainer agreement. There were no such expenses or retainer agreement.
The records related to the reimbursement underpin the 34 counts of falsifying business records: 11 counts involve the checks issued to Mr. Cohen, 11 center on monthly invoices Mr. Cohen submitted to the company, and 12 involve entries in the general ledger for Mr. Trump’s trust.
( If Trump would have been honest , he probably would have never gotten indicted. But he is a dishonest, backstabbing, cheapskate, as Mr. Cohen and all the Trump associates who are currently in jail can testify to. )
2scents,
This is part of the bluff.
The prosecution proved with evidence and testimony, and this is quite obvious , that Trump was repaying Michael Cohen because Michael laid out $130,000 in payments to the person Trump had an affair with. That $130,000 payment was part of a scheme to prevent shame to candidate Trump.
None of that is a Trump Organization business expense. Who cares what the classification was or if Trump even knew how the ledger was written? He knew why he was paying Michael Cohen and he signed the checks !!!I would like all the people that think they have great defenses for Trump to please contact him and tell him that he should have used their defenses. I am sure that the convicted felon and his lawyer team led by Todd Branche and Susan Necheles would love to discuss it with them.
Would Bragg have gone after Biden with the same vigor that he went after President Trump?
Certainly a salient point of all of this is the former president didn’t want the negative press about him and Stephanie Clifford, because he was afraid it would impact his chances of being elected.
jackk,
Your take on the matter is appreciated. However, many law experts strongly disagree with your assertion and how this case was handled. They do not believe a crime was committed and believe things were done correctly. This includes the expert witnesses who were not allowed to share their opinions if it was done correctly or not.
what are the implications of this very stringent interpretation of “benefiting the campaign”?
if a newspaper announces that this is an emergency and their goal is to stop election of a certain candidate, is their publishing activity a campaign contribution? If they have 1 million of digital readers, this would make it a million counts. The jury will take a lot of time to read them out.
when an elected official performs multiple acts to benefit his campaign (forgiving loans, proposing peace plans, issuing border instructions) – these are all benefiting his campaign. He should (1) reimburse USGOV all the expenses (2) use only funds he acquired via legit campaign donations for the reimbursement. Of course, you can argue that it is hard to prove that the president did this for campaign purposes, but after votes in South Dakota sue him, it will be up to a jury there to decide.
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